Suburban Mobilities is poised to draw from diverse approaches to studying urban dynamics, specifically as they pertain to applications and research in suburban transportation. Transportation has a unique place at the centre of many human and environmental system dynamics, as it has an impact on (and is in turn impacted by) land use, energy use, mobility, access to services, and sustainability.
The Suburban Mobilities Cluster in particular builds on this by recognizing that while urban regions continue to grow, much of the urbanization that is occurring is better described as suburbanization. There are many mobility challenges associated with suburban forms of development and within this research context, the suburban mobilities cluster will focus on four specific research themes:
1.Urban inequality: We will use multidisciplinary approaches to transportation to better understand how to prevent transport-related social exclusion in suburbia, and determine the impact this could have on economic inclusion, health and wellbeing.
2. Transportation design and technology: Research in this theme will better understand the transport and land use characteristics of suburban contexts and use this as a foundation to model, pilot, experiment and evaluate best uses of new and alternative designs, technologies, and policies.
3. Climate change: Of particular interest to the project team is the role of built form and transport technology in travel behaviour and emissions and how climate policy goals can be achieved through transport planning and policy at the local and regional levels.
4. Shocks and resilience: Research in this theme will explore questions of efficiency versus vulnerability in mobility systems and understand how these dynamics play out within the suburban transport-land use contexts.
